What's in a song?

We have entered the hottest part of the summer. Between this, a song on the Rolling Stones' new album, and Cindy Sheehan's vigil at Crawford, Texas, we've also entered a season of discontent and resistance. At last.

Rather than droning on with my own annoying rants, today I just want to call your attention to an exceptional piece by the Rude Pundit. (Quoted above.) The influence of music (and their associated, pervasive music videos) is often underestimated in politics. The Rude One is coveing a number of songs and videos which support progressive goals, but in particular he's focusing on the new video from Green Day.

Now, in the video for the seemingly straightforward power ballad "Wake Me Up When September Comes," Green Day makes an answer to every Army-of-One bullshit ad. The video begins with a sappy teen love story, complete with the music low and the dialogue audible, until we see the weeping teenage girl going up to the teenage boy, begging to know if what she heard is true. The boy explodes that she doesn't understand, and then we see what they're talking about, with the boy going off in a bus, having his head shaved, being trained by the military, and sent to an urban battlefield that is presumably Iraq.

There, guitars peaking in the background, we watch as the boy's patrol comes under fire from an unseen enemy, with explosions and bullets all around them. As he watches his fellow soldiers being hit, we see the boy, scared, confused, hidden in one of the bombed out buildings. The thing is that it's filmed as if it is one of those Army or Marine ads, except it looks fucking scary. And then it ends with the teenage girl back at home, sitting on bleachers. We don't know if the boy lives or dies (perhaps there's a sequel in the offing?), but we know that the innocence of the early part has been compromised, and that there's no way that girl and that boy can ever connect again.

This is an excellent rant, and will hopefully draw more attention to progressive artists who are speaking out about the failures of this administration.